


Braids

by minkit



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28890615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkit/pseuds/minkit
Summary: There's a reason I no longer have long hair...
Comments: 3
Kudos: 3





	Braids

**Author's Note:**

> i posted this to the nosleep reddit but thought why not post it here too?? don't really expect anyone to read this but I just wanted to give writing a horror story a try. its a mild and tame horror story but I had fun writing it!!

Ever since I was young, I preferred to keep my hair long. I was proud of it, the vibrant natural red that flowed behind me like fire, the way it curled at the ends, brushing against the small of my back. I liked how it bounced up around my shoulders whenever I would jump rope. Rapunzel was my favorite Disney princess, and I always dreamed of one day my prince climbing up my hair and stealing me away to somewhere far and beautiful.

As a child, my mother would sit me down in front of her, take my hair in hand, and gently brush it. She would run her long fingers through my hair, working at the tangles from the day’s play. It’s a memory that sits with me still, even years after her passing. 

I remember when I was eight, my hair just touching past my shoulders, and I’d go to sleep with it like that, wild and free and by morning it would be the most tangled bird’s nest you ever did see. But still, I slept with fanning out around my face, buried beneath my hair, until one day, I woke up to my hair braided and laying neatly against my shoulder.

I was confused. I had never braided my hair. The few times I pulled my hair up, it was in a ponytail or a bun and it was usually when I would go swimming at the public pool in town. When I walked out, fingers twisting at the ends of my hair, my mom was cooking breakfast and so I asked her, “Mommy, did you braid it?”

She smiled over at me, her own hair chestnut and color and tucked just beneath her ears. Mom opened her arms and welcomed me into a hug and said yes, she braided it to keep it from getting damaged.

It became a nightly thing after that. I’d go to sleep with my hair loose and free and wake up to a new braid sitting against my shoulder. At times, I wondered how she could do all that and not even wake me, but I always had been a rather deep sleeper. 

But things changed when I turned fourteen and my mother died.

I was devastated. I’d always been close to her and losing her at such a young age had certainly taken its toll on me, my brothers, my father, and everyone else in our family. But for me in particular, it nearly damaged me beyond repair.

I got into things I shouldn’t. Drugs, alcohol, I started experimenting, I’d barely eat. I was destroying myself slowly but surely and no matter how much my family seemed to try, nothing they did seemed to help.

It wasn’t until one day when I was sixteen that I accidentally overdosed did I finally get the help I needed. They had me committed to a facility and for me, that was exactly what I needed. 

While in the facility, I met a friend. I’ll call her Kathleen. She was into all sorts of things, crystals, spirituality, she believed in witchcraft, and life after death. She didn’t do anything bad. She’s probably one of the nicest people I’ve ever met and only ever wanted to help people, but I got into it as well. I never did any of the stuff, but I believed in it. The idea there could be life after death? That maybe my mother is somewhere out there looking over me? It was comforting.

When I was nineteen and finally had gotten my GED, I decided I wanted to pursue fashion and moved out to New York City to do just that. My dad helped me rent my own apartment (we were lucky to be fairly well-off that we could afford to do this) and buy necessities as I got settled and looked for a part-time job just for my extra needs as I focused on studying in school. And it was on the fifth anniversary of my mom’s death that it happened.

I had taken to sleeping with my hair in a braid every night since my mom had died, taking the time to do it myself because it was a way that I found comfort, that I could be close to her even in her death. This particular night however had been the end to an incredibly long day, and I had actually passed out before even getting ready for bed. My books were on the bed, my phone long tumbled to the floor (thankfully didn’t crack), and my hair was a wild mess. I was just too exhausted to care.

So I slept like that. But that’s not how I woke up.

When I woke up, I first noticed that the blankets were now lifted over my waist and my books were in a neat stack at the foot of my bed. It confused me at first. Had I woken up in the middle of the night and done that? Maybe I was just too tired and couldn’t remember. 

I reached for my phone but when I looked around, it was plugged in and lying on my bedside table, fully charged. But the weirdest thing was… 

My hair was fully braided and laid out over my shoulder, just as my mom had done for me as a child. 

I was spooked and confused at first. “Dad?” I called through my apartment to no answer, but I had thought maybe he had come for a visit. It wouldn’t be the first time, but that wasn’t the case here.

I glanced down at the red, that had calmed and faded from that fiery orange to a more subdued and darker auburn color. I twisted it around my fingers and felt confused, but strangely warm. 

Was it my mother? Had she done this for me? On the fifth anniversary of her death, the one night I didn’t braid my hair in years, had she braided it for me?

_ She must have _ , I thought to myself with excitement. There could be no other explanation. I certainly hadn’t done it after all, I had no roommates, and my dad wasn’t here. It had to be my mom.

But I needed to make sure that I wasn’t just imagining it. Maybe I did braid my own hair. Maybe I woke up in the middle of the night and was just so exhausted that I had done all that without even fully being awake. It’s not like it’s impossible.

So I left my hair unbraided that night when I went to sleep.

I woke up to the sun shining brightly through the cracks of the blinds. For a moment, I forgot everything as I stretched and yawned and then I sat up, grabbing my hair. And it was braided. 

A braid laid out over my shoulder, the same exact braid as the night before, the one my mother had used to do for me, and the one I had been doing for myself since age fourteen, since my mother had died.

It was real! My mother was visiting me. She was looking over me just as I thought she was, just as Kathleen had taught me was a real possibility. 

I felt warm and happier than I had in years to know this. She was beside me and that’s all I needed.

From there, I left my hair unbraided every single night, and every single night I would awaken to find that same braid, laid on my shoulder and my things organized nice and neat if I had left them a mess the night before. 

  
At first, I didn’t want to tell anyone for fear they would call me crazy, but finally I had to tell someone, I was bursting at the seams to let someone know that my mother was visiting me from the afterlife, that she still watched over from me in death. 

And just as I expected, my friend looked at me both as if I was crazy but then in worry. “Your mother is doing that?” She had asked, disbelief in her voice.

“Who else?” I replied back, twirling my fingers through my hair, imagining they were my mothers instead. 

“You lock your door, don’t you?” 

“Of course I lock my door.” I sighed in exasperation. I’m not an idiot. I’m a young woman living alone in New York City. I wasn’t about to take that chance. 

Despite my friend’s misgivings, I knew that it was my mother. I had no doubts that it was my mother, and I continued believing this for months.

One night in April towards the end of my first year in New York City, bad cramps had made it difficult for me to fall asleep. I tossed and turned, and despite swallowing as much pain medication as I possibly could, my past with drug abuse made me wary of doing that. But nothing seemed to help, no matter how much heat I applied, how much water I drank, those damn cramps just wouldn’t fade. 

But eventually I did fall asleep, even though it was a light and fitful one. 

I awoke to the feeling of fingers brushing through my hair, the light tugs against my scalp as my hair was braided. I smiled because I knew it was my mother, but I didn’t open my eyes because I was afraid she’d disappear the moment I did, so I let myself enjoy the moment, relishing in actually getting to experience it and not just wake up to it.

Then I felt breathe against my face and my heart stopped beneath my ribs. 

My mother is dead, a ghost. Even if I could feel the ghostly touch of her invisible fingers running through my hair, I shouldn’t be able to feel  _ breath _ . She didn’t breathe. 

Fingers petted at the firm braid as it was placed against my shoulder, and a strange smell of mint wafted up my nose as the breath got even closer. I could hear it. I could feel it against my ear and then I felt a nose press against me and someone took in a deep breath.

“So pretty…” They murmured and I wanted to scream. I wanted to yell and freak out but I bit down on the inside of my cheek and stayed still as they held this position for I don’t even know how long, but I knew it wasn’t my mother, because it was a male voice that spoke. 

I don’t know how long I laid there, pretending to be asleep, until I heard him move. He stood and shuffled about my room. I heard my bookbag being latched shut, my shoes being pushed beneath my bed and finally the footsteps receded towards my door. There was a slight pause before I heard it open and then it was slowly and quietly shut, then I heard the sound of a key being pressed into the doorknob and turned, locking my apartment as they left.

I sat up in bed, quickly turning on my lights as I shook and trembled on the bed, weeping at whatever the hell had just happened. Tears streamed down my cheeks in a panic and I grabbed my phone, quickly calling my friend, not caring that it was the middle of the night and asked if I could stay with her. 

She said yes, clearly worried over how upset I was and I grabbed my stuff and left within ten minutes. I moved shortly after, terrified to ever be in that apartment complex alone again. I later learned that the landlord had made it a habit of breaking into young women’s apartments, stealing their things and doing who knows what to all of them.

Just the knowledge that he could’ve been doing anything to me in my sleep, and I never would’ve known if it wasn’t for me waking up that one single night terrified the hell out of me. I could still feel his fingers running through my hair, the feel of his breath against my skin… 

And so I cut my hair off, keeping it curled up around my ears, just as my mother had done before she died.

I never grew out my hair again.

  
  
  
  



End file.
